Posts tagged with: Lisbon

I’ve just returned to Rome following our Lisbon conference on Catholic Social Teaching, Free Enterprise and Poverty. Judging from the crowded auditorium and the lively comments from the audience, it was a very successful event. Here I’ll mention a few of my personal highlights from the event:

– Bishop Filippo Santoro gave an excellent presentation on the errors of using income transfers to achieve a more equal society, and especially the dependency the poor develop on the state.

— Professor Raúl Diniz reminded us that there is no particularly “Catholic” model of economics and that more Catholics should heed the advice of free-market or “liberal” economics in our time.

— Fr. João Seabra offered a spirited defense of Pope Pius XI’s anti-communism, which sadly still needs to be recalled twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union.

— Paul Atkins explained to our Portuguese audience how decades of well-intentioned policies carried out by the US government to promote home ownership lead to the recent financial crisis and the lessons concerning regulation that should be drawn by developing countries.

— Samuel Grottis spoke about how successful businesses are not just profit-making but transformational.

— Professor João César das Neves exploded the myths surrounding the Chinese economy, calling it a seductive form of Marxism. (Apparently his PowerPoint presentation was quite a hit as well, but I couldn’t see it from where I was seated as the moderator of his panel. Perhaps the good professor will kindly share it with us on the PowerBlog.

There were many other intriguing points raised by the speakers and during the Q&A session about the challenges of capitalism to Christianity and the conference could have easily lasted another day or two. The viewing of the Poverty Cure trailer was especially well received.

On a side note, the Saturday before the conference, there was a large protest of public-sector employees against the Portuguese government’s austerity plans. From what I could tell from my meanderings through the streets of Lisbon that day, even the slightest reduction in benefits will meet with stiff resistance from the public-sector unions, which should put paid to the idea that government workers are somehow more concerned with the common good than private-sector workers.

All in all, it was an auspicious beginning for what many hope will be a continuing fruitful relationship between the Institute for Political Studies at the Catholic University of Portugal and the Acton Institute. Mui obrigrado to all who made this a great conference.

I’m currently in Lisbon ahead of Acton’s fourth conference in the seven-part series Poverty, Entrepreneurship, and Integral Development. Entitled “Catholic Social Teaching, Free Enterprise, and Poverty”, it will take place on Tuesday, November 9 at the Catholic University of Portugal. Click here for more information or if you happen to be in the Lisbon area and want to join us.

Tuesday’s conference was designed to focus on the Portuguese-speaking world, primarily because of its inter-continental scope and close connection to the Catholic faith, and to discuss the challenges posed by extreme poverty in developing countries and what can be done to address them. As often happens with our conferences, the reality of current events has a way of stressing the importance of principles that support a free and virtuous society.

Later in the day, I learned of the recent election of the left-wing Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, and her desires to continue her predecessor Lula’s economic reforms towards an environment of inflation targeting and broad fiscal responsibility. Rather surprising coming from a former guerilla fighter whose tendencies should be to distrust markets and increase the size and scope of the state.

And finally, the United Nations published its 2010 Human Development Report, which shows that developing countries have become much wealthier and healthier in the last 40 years, which not coincidentally is more or less when many of these countries have opened themselves up to the benefits of free markets, both domestically and internationally. The UNDP report’s central thesis that “people are the real wealth of a nation” echoes, of course, Pope John Paul II’s 1991 social encyclical Centesimus Annus and its proclamation that “man’s greatest resource is man himself” (n. 32).

What current events such as these are telling me is that while poorer countries have adopted free markets in order to improve the living conditions of their people, it is the developed world that has forgotten the lessons of wealth creation and free enterprise. The former colonials now have much to teach their former masters! Quite a remarkable shift that, in my mind, looks poised to stand for some time to come.

These and other delicious ironies of the day will certainly make for a stimulating event on Tuesday.